From Christmas to Christmas

The last time I was this far from home during the holidays, it was 1993, I was living in Asahi Residence, a white three-story apartment building a mile from Yokota Air Base in Fussa-shi, Japan. I'd been married for six months and Becky was four months pregnant with Jonah. I was in the first year of a four-year enlistment, we missed our family and friends, and we must have wondered what in the world we'd gotten ourselves into.

Now, twenty-three years later, our kids all grown up and about the same age I was back then and they are consumed by formative experiences of their own, and I think about where we are today.

The year has been consumed with thoughts of the Middle East. Since John first called us on Christmas morning, our lives have revolved around this idea of living and working 6,900 miles from our home on the opposite side of the world. The sun rises at home after ours has set and we sleep while back home busies about their day. Samson gets on the school bus as we go to bed. Matt drives across the tundra of Renville County sipping coffee and listening to the radio and the ghostly hymn of the call to prayer drifts into our open window at 5 a.m. Mom keeps the axis fixed at Sumter Mutual keeping the connection with Silver Lake, the site of my own personal big bang and the early formation of what would become the universe that sustains the life I've led.  Dad sits in his chair, reading into the night as the moon lights the frozen surface of Lake John and its sparse village of fish houses. I walk down to the canteen after 5th period to buy some fattouch, a Lebanese salad I rely on for sustenance, seasoned with sumac spice--the same color as the berries on the sumac back home. Katie and Hallie send snapchats and we see them hours later and laugh together. I walk through the courtyards between the villas making a 45 minute circuit listening to an episode of the TED radio hour on my headphones. Oma is settled in out at the end of 500th lane, a fire glowing behind the glass door of the wood stove in the corner, while she slices cucumbers for an artfully quartered sandwich snack before posting a message on facebook. The refrigerator hums in the darkened room of the 3rd floor staff lounge waiting for Henke to trip the automatic lights when he comes in to measure out coffee, fill the reservoir with water and begin again a day at AHS. We finish a movie late into the night and lay out our clothes for work the next morning and then go to sleep.

I am the sum of all my experiences, of my people, here in the final days of 2016. It has been one year since I began this journey and I'm happy and miss my friends and family and hearing the winter wind in the branches of the pines surrounding the cabin. But I need to remember this time, too, here at 6 a.m. while Amy, love of my life and fellow adventurer, is still asleep in the next room of villa W18C, Sara Compound, Aziziyah, Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia, this 16th of December 2016.

Merry Christmas.